NEW YORK — The chants were loud and steady from the Madison Square Garden crowd.

Not cheers for the home team on this night, but instead shouts from a large contingent of Argentinian fans who were on hand to cheer Manu Ginobili as the San Antonio Spurs 40-year-old mainstay played his annual possible last game at Madison Square Garden.

Ginobili didn’t look anywhere near the end on this night, soaking in the cheers of "Manu" and "Ole" as he helped the Spurs to a 100-91 win over the Knicks, completing a home-and-home sweep over a span of five days.

Someday the Knicks won’t have to contend with the longtime Spurs stars, Ginobili and Tony Parker, who have spent 16 and 17 seasons, respectively, in San Antonio. But for now, those two, along with Kawhi Leonard and the next wave of Spurs players plugged into coach Gregg Popovich’s system, were simply too much for the Knicks.

“I thought about that,” Popovich said of the day when he no longer will have these players who have been constants in the lineup for so long. “I still miss Timmy (Duncan). Manu will go at some point, maybe the next five, six years. Tony thinks he’s going to play for 10 more. These contracts are pretty good. Danny Green has been here for a while. What year is this for Kawhi? Six, seven, something like that?

“A lot of the guys have been around for a while. I’m the guy that should probably get the hell out of there so they can start over again and do something better. Timmy, he’s there. He comes to the practices. He’s got a locker right across from mine. Matt Bonner is right there, Monty Williams is right there. So they come in probably at least three times a week, they’re out on the court, talking to the guys, playing. They’re still hanging around, all those guys.”

No matter the age, they outplayed the Knicks.

"They're an unselfish team," Enes Kanter said. "They love to share the ball, If you look at it, they’ve been playing together for a long time. So they have a lot of experience. They just played harder than us. We’re younger than them but they just played harder than us. They played with more energy and we just didn’t have it tonight."

The Knicks can look forward to a day when Ginobili is just occupying locker space as a coach like those former Spurs’ players. But for now, they still are players that they just don’t have an answer for. Ginobili had 12 points, four rebounds and two assists. LaMarcus Aldridge led the Spurs with 29.

Given a chance to prepare for the Knicks, they stymied Kristaps Porzingis, limiting him to just 13 points on 5-of-19 shooting.

"They make it really tough and they switch a lot," Porzingis said. "And they front you and they put guys around you. They make it tough for the passer and they also put a lot of pressure on the passer and they make it tough for me. They play good team defense. They move together. It’s really tough to get an advantage there. They’re one of the best teams of doing that in that league."

Leonard, who did not play Thursday when the teams met last week, was a huge factor this time, scoring 25 points and more important, stabilizing the Spurs’ defense after the Knicks had managed 107 points last time.

“It really is a pain in the neck,” Popovich said of trying to navigate through the season with Leonard out of the lineup for all but seven games so far. “We got that Kawhi, with Danny Green, with Tony Parker. We’ve had it for a while. But it’s difficult because it’s very strange to try to figure out rotations. You can’t do it.

New York Knicks center Kyle O'Quinn (9) reacts to being called for a technical foul against the San Antonio Spurs during the first half at Madison Square Garden.(Photo: Adam Hunger, Adam Hunger-USA TODAY Sports)

“You want to put somebody on the court but you can’t because of minutes, so you put somebody else who shouldn’t be on the court on the court based on matchups or what you’re trying to do defensively or offensively or defensively. It’s really a mish-mosh. The more guys you have with minutes restrictions the more difficult it is to maintain some sort of a rhythm and some sort of a consistency so you can execute at both ends. We all know this game is all about execution, so that makes it difficult. But that’s the way it is, so you deal with it.”

The Knicks hung around, trailing just 52-49 at halftime thanks to the contribution of Lance Thomas, who scored all 13 of his season-high point total in the first half. He not only led the Knicks, but also delivered a buzzer-beating corner three-pointer to end the half.

The Knicks briefly took a 59-57 lead early in the third quarter, but Leonard answered with a three-pointer and the Spurs never trailed again. It didn’t hurt that late in the third quarter Ginobili made a play that even he had to shrug his shoulders at, attempting a lob to LaMarcus Aldridge that instead slipped through the net for a three-point field goal.

Michael Beasley led the Knicks with 18 points off the bench. It wasn't nearly enough to beat the Spurs or silence the chants for Ginobili.

"I didn’t pay attention to it," Porzingis said. "Manu has had a great career. He’s still having a great career, not that he’s done. He’s still playing. He’s definitely one of the top outside the U.S. players to ever play the game. He’s achieved so much. I don’t know. Maybe they came from Argentina."